The present invention can be employed for producing jacquard-patterned plush-loop warp knit fabric of the type having a pillar-and-inlay ground-fabric structure, with one set of pile threads per wale, a selected pile thread of each pile-thread set being tied into the ground fabric in the form of a loop and furthermore forming a plush loop, with the non-selected pile threads of the set being tied into the fabric as mere walewise-running unlooped threads.
The present invention concerns warp knitting machines, especially but not exclusively chrochet-galoon machines, of the type which typically comprise one row of knitting needles, a pillar bar for converting knitting laps into interlaced adjoining wales, an inlay bar for laying at least one inlay thread into the ground fabric, plural pile-thread guiders per needle, means for laying selected pile threads into needle hooks, means for under-lapping the non-selected pile threads, and a row of plush bars alternating with the knitting needles, as well as methods of operating such machines.
German Democratic Republic Pat. No. 110,073 discloses a machine of the type just outlined. In that machine, use is made of a row of multiple-eyelet pile-thread guiders, each pile-thread guider guiding a different pile thread through each of its multiple eyelets. The row of multiple-eyelet pile-thread guiders can be shogged and can be lowered into the spaces intermediate the needles once per each two knit courses, the eyelets being oriented approximately parallel to the longitudinal direction of the needles. Associated with each multiple-eyelet pile-thread guider is a respective selector member which has an open throat facing the row of needles. Depending upon which of the pile threads guided through the multiple-eyelet guiders are to be selected at a particular point in a pattern, the selector members move to different positions associated with different ones of the eyelets. The selector members serve to actually lay the selected pile threads into the hooks of the needles.
That machine is capable of high-productivity manufacture of plush-loop warp knit fabric, when extreme fineness of fabric is not involved. However, when use is to be made of the almost untwisted synthetic threads so desired for use as the pile threads of such a fabric, and especially when a considerable number of pile thread is involved in the set of pile threads associated with each needle, faulty operation tends to occur with regard to selection of particular pile threads for appearance in the visible pile pattern and also at those locations where the needles, when driven out to extended position, pass through the associated set of pile threads. The result is either a fault in the pattern or even loss of proper interlacing, which leads to poor quality especially when greater-fineness fabric with a larger number of pile threads per pile-thread set is to be produced.